Darkness in America. Who cares?

The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > Book Review: Atrocities in Plain Sight

...Whatever happened was exposed in a free society; the military itself began the first inquiries. You can now read, in these pages, previously secret memorandums from sources as high as the attorney general all the way down to prisoner testimony to the International Committee of the Red Cross. I confess to finding this transparency both comforting and chilling, like the photographs that kick-started the public's awareness of the affair. Comforting because only a country that is still free would allow such airing of blood-soaked laundry. Chilling because the crimes committed strike so deeply at the core of what a free country is supposed to mean. The scandal of Abu Ghraib is therefore a sign of both freedom's endurance in America and also, in certain dark corners, its demise.

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Blah, blah blah. Torture. Deception. Betrayal. Stupidity. Cruelty. Who cares? Freedom was a heavy burden, we're better off without it.

Venezuala is the future

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Thong warfare and a kidnapped beauty queen

Is Venezuala our future? It reads like the majority of modern dystopian science fiction. A bright, spoiled and corrupt elite, a dull, corrupt and spoiled dictatorship, and the faceless masses below. Actually, it's mostly Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil'. Come to think of it, isn't Brazil nearby? (joke)

Read it.

This is one of our possible futures.

A contrarian view of dog training

Train in Vain - Why dog training fails. By Jon Katz

...Training also requires that we understand the animal nature of dogs, their love of rules, ritual, food, and reinforcement. Let dogs be dogs—it's an honorable thing to be. Because many owners prefer to view their pets as soul mates, therapists, ethereal beings, even mind-readers, we give them too much credit, make them too complex, muddying our communications.

Seeing dogs as piteous, abused, and pathetic creatures doesn't help either. Many dogs are mistreated, including my elder border collie. But I never refer to Orson as an abused dog. I don't want to see him that way, and when it comes to training, it doesn't really matter. I treat him well, love him wildly, train him carefully, and have high expectations. We will work until we get there; he deserves no less. If one more well-meaning owner tries to explain that his dog is biting my ankle or attacking my dog because 'he was terribly abused,' I might go buy some mace. And not for the dog....

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Jon Katz loves dogs. Not just his dogs, but dogs as a people (species is not quite the right word.)

This is a good essay on training. It reminds me of the many years I spent with Molly at Marly's Canine College (which was of the "old school", she regarded me somewhat affectionately as a soft-hearted wimp). At Marly's I saw what Katz writes. Every dog needs his or her own approach to training. Ever trainer needs his or her own approach. The two compromise. Mostly it takes a long long time for most dogs and trainers.

Molly was a bit high strung, and jealous of our attention. She did very well with our kids even in her middle-age, but that was a result of a lot of work from us and her. There are resemblances between the lessons Katz outlines and those I've learned from our children.

Who will save American journalism?

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: All the President's Newsmen

ONE day after the co-host Tucker Carlson made his farewell appearance and two days after the new president of CNN made the admirable announcement that he would soon kill the program altogether, a television news miracle occurred: even as it staggered through its last nine yards to the network guillotine, 'Crossfire' came up with the worst show in its fabled 23-year history....

I do not mean to minimize the CBS News debacle and other recent journalistic outrages at The New York Times and elsewhere. But the Jan. 7 edition of CNN's signature show can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth...

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DeLong returns often to this theme. The current ethos of American journalism is a mirror of NPR's talk shows. Present the words of one side, then present the words of another side. Pay no attention to who contradicts reality -- reality is constructed, hence it cannot be objectively defined and it cannot be defended.

We are suffering terribly for the sins of the deconstructionists.

Who will resurrect journalism in America? Not the New York Times! Not the Washington Post. Who?

The National Intelligence Council predicts the future

NIC - Mapping the Global Future: Executive Summary

The site is unreachable at the moment, but it should slow down in a day or two.

Huygens has landed

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Titan data from Huygens arrives

We disturbed the gods today.

Apple revenues: the missed story

SiliconValley.com | 01/13/2005 | Apple unveils iProfit Maxi

Silicon Valley's newspaper notes what most miss on the Apple story: "More astonishing were Apple's overall computer sales, which surged to $1.6 billion, a 26 percent improvement from a year ago."

Conventional wisdom in some quarters has been that Apple may succeed with music, but that their computer business is doomed. The real story of this year's annual report is that their computer sales are surging -- even while everyone else is hurting.

Social Security assault: It's ideology, not demography and not economics

Shrillblog: WaPo Goes WaCkoFrom the WaPo:

... In short, Social Security is not facing a financial crisis at all. It is facing a need for some distinctly sub-cataclysmic adjustments over the next few decades that would increase its revenue and diminish its benefits.

Politically, however, Social Security is facing the gravest crisis it has ever known. For the first time in its history, it is confronted by a president, and just possibly by a working congressional majority, who are opposed to the program on ideological grounds, who view the New Deal as a repealable aberration in U.S. history, who would have voted against establishing the program had they been in Congress in 1935.

It's the same story with the funding of education in Minnesota. Pawlenty's attack is not about economics, or even about outcomes, it's about ideology. It's all about the foundations of the Republican/Libertarian agenda:

1. Eliminate progressivity in taxation and services.
2. Let the wolves take the weak.

We can have good and important discussions about both of these principals. We can't, however, start those discussion until American journalists find their way out of the deep, dark, black hole they're wandering in. Without journalists cutting through the fog of clever nonsense, Pawlenty and Bush, each in their sphere, will win their covert war.

I don't mind losing a war of ideology that's openly fought. If those two principals are the new core of our society, I can handle that (mostly by looking for refuge and moving!). It really annoys me to never have a chance to fight at all.

Be the Best You can Be: Pawlenty vs the american dream

Be the Best You can Be: Pawlenty's educational plan -- killing the american dream

He shows his colors.

Friedman's seven rules of mideast politics

The New York Times > Opinion > Friedman: Ballots and Boycotts

Rule 1 Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a cease-fire; it will always be over by the time the next morning's paper is out.

Rule 2 Never take a concession, except out of the mouth of the person who is supposed to be doing the conceding. If I had a dime for every time someone agreed to recognize Israel on behalf of Yasir Arafat, I would be a wealthy man today.

Rule 3 The Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure that they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.

Rule 4 In the Middle East, if you can't explain something with a conspiracy theory, then don't try to explain it at all - people there won't believe it.

Rule 5 In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way, and the moderates tend to just go away - unless the coast is completely clear.

Rule 6 The most oft-used phrase of Mideast moderates is: 'We were just about to stand up to the bad guys when you stupid Americans did that stupid thing. Had you stupid Americans not done that stupid thing, we would have stood up, but now it's too late. It's all your fault for being so stupid.'

Rule 7 In Middle East politics there is rarely a happy medium. When one side is weak, it will tell you, 'How can I compromise?' And the minute it becomes strong, it will tell you, 'Why should I compromise?'

Rule 8 What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in Arabic, in Hebrew or in any other local language. Anything said in English doesn't count.

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I think these are quite interesting. Best he's done in a while. For what it's worth, I agree that it's not worth postponing the Iraq elections unless the Shia's ask for a delay.

Titanic Friday

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Under the Moon

Our lander flies into Titan tomorrow.

Keep your toes and fingers crossed.

Never have we reached so far.

Least competent defense attorney

Boing Boing: Quote of the day: pyramid scheme

'Don't cheerleaders all over America make pyramids every day? It's not torture.' -- Defense lawyer Guy Womack speaking about alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, during the trial of accused military personnel.

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Womack may not be a dumb as he sounds. Maybe this is a brilliant strategy to enable a future appeal on the grounds that the defense counsel was incompetent.

Global warming -- Now you can panic

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Why the Sun seems to be 'dimming'

Here's the thesis:

1. Particulate matter (soot, etc) is changing cloud behavior much more than we'd thought. This results in increasing the earth's albedo (reflectivity -- so can satellites we see the moon brightening over the past few years? probably no baseline ...) and cooling the earth.
2. Changes in clouds are altering rainfall, may have been responsible for recent African droughts, and may cause drought in China.
3. The earth is not getting cooler, however. It's getting warmer. But, from #1, there's less sunlight reaching the earth. SOOO ... the greenhouse effect is much stronger than we though. That means the extreme global warming models are more plausible.
4. We're reducing particulate pollution even as we increase greenhouse gas pollution. That means less of #1 and #2, but it means much more of #3.

Phew.

We'll see. Sounds like this thesis is only now gathering steam. It may yet be shot down. If it isn't ...

Protection rackets hit gambling sites

BBC NEWS | Technology | Rings of steel combat net attacks

Gangs demand protection money from gambling sites. If they don't pay up, they are hit with a denial of service attack.

The interesting part is that they don't seem to target legitimate businesses (Amazon), or at least the journalist didn't mention that. I suspect this is simple logic. Amazon is unlikely to pay up, and they're a much tougher target. It's the same reason physical world protection rackets don't target Walmart.

HubMed: Syndicating PubMed Search results

HubMed

This was featured in a recent Blogline's newsletter. It turns a PubMed query into an RSS/Atom source. Similar to what I used to do with embedding PubMed queries into URL, but now conveniently integrated with one's RSS reader. It's of particular interest to researchers who want to monitor developments in an active area.

It looks like an experiment from the NIH/NCBI.

PS. I go way back in this area. I was an early usability tester for Grateful Med, a precursor to PubMed. (In some regards I prefer Grateful Med to PubMed, but I have a historic bias. Rosemary Woodsmall was the Product Manager for that effort.)